Routine Production of [¹⁸F]F₂ from 11 MeV Proton-Only Cyclotron and Its Use for the Synthesis of ¹⁸F-Tracers for Heart and Brain

Abstract

Although an increasing number of PET centres are using small proton-only cyclotrons for routine production of ¹⁸F-labelled radiopharmaceuticals, only a few reports^1,2,3 have been published on the routine production of electrophilic fluorine using the ¹⁸O(p,n)¹⁸F reaction. Nickels et al. ⁴ first reported a “one-shoot” and a “two-shoot” method to produce [¹⁸F]F₂ from ¹⁸O-gas target. The “two-shoot” method is highly attractive because it allows quantitative recovery of ¹⁸O-gas from the target. In this paper we report our experiences during the first year of operation, using a Siemens RDS 112 (11 MeV proton-cyclotron), with the “two-shoot” approach to the routine production of [¹⁸F]F₂ for radiopharmaceutical synthesis.